O Review

Review: Taste by Beth Taylor

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It’s actually hard to give a good effort a bad review. I think Beth Taylor didn’t excactly rob me for $3.01, and I wouldn’t be gauche enough to demand a refund. However, I just couldn’t get into Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story by Beth Taylor,  mostly because of the writing style.

I tried, and I thought about not reviewing it at all. Maybe I simply didn’t give the characters a chance? It focuses on the love lives of a bunch of upper class British people with titles. It’s supposed to be about duty, but the duty element doesn’t really leap out while people are having impassioned email spats about their sexual desires and are supposed to be over educated and leading jet set lives.

Taste probably got off to a bad start by using the format of an email discussion, at least for me, I feel like I’m reading a chat log of someone’s RPG and I’m not really feeling it. I couldn’t make myself care about any of the characters or take their problems seriously. Here’s an excerpt of what I mean:

As he continues to lightly rub each of her feet, he glances over to see that smile of hers as she Skypes with her eldest brother – then smiles automatically in response, almost against his will, given his mood.

[Steph]: He’s watching The Masters wrap up.

[James]: Ask him if he’s finally gaining some sporting affection for Australia. If not, he should do!

[Steph, still smiling]: He’s in a quiet mood, Jamesy; not a great time for a piss-take, but when he finally tells me what’s on his mind, I’ll surely tease him afterwards for you.

[James]: Goodgood. Must dash, can’t wait to see you next week, it’s been too long.

Taylor, Beth (2013-05-05). Taste: An Aristocratic Femdom Love Story (Kindle Locations 455-464). . Kindle Edition.

Maybe some of the challenge was also that people were written as reacting to Steph’s random dominance, but I had no reason to find her as entrancing as the rest of the characters seemed to. Purely as a study of inter personal relationships and maudlin concepts, it’s not *that* bad. But while I wouldn’t burn this book, I wouldn’t advise you to buy it either. This is not “Twilight” bad, this is in the realm of being bad enough to be ignored but not bad enough to be fair or kind to pick on it.

Category: Short Ebook
Rating: o (1/5)
How I got it: Bought it
TL;DR: Overly creative formatting and characters I couldn’t get into. Scenarios had hints of being hot, but it needs more than a few sexy ideas to be worth it.

Review: Control by Charlotte Stein

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The new cover of Control, by Charlotte Stein, is a rare example of a femdom book designed to appeal to a woman and which also does not get hung up on the idea of making her into a pro or head mistress or some such. It’s fun, it’s light and it even has a wee little bit of romance. And a very mundane setting down to the fixtures and baked pasta dish (surprisingly memorable in the way that you remember those little details when you fall in love) and a submissive male lead I could actually see myself wanting to fuck. That, in a world of pornography that goes out of its way to sell male subs as walking creep farms or eunuchs, is a very rewarding achievement in its own right.

The protagonist, an owner/operator of a naughty book store “Wicked Words”, has her choice between Submissive Gabe and Dominant Andy. Meeting both men as potential workers in her shop, she sets about shagging Andy seven ways to Sunday while sexually teasing Gabe non-stop.

Suspend practicalities- Madison, our heroine, lives in a world where this much fucking is normal. It’s porn, so it can be excused with the jerky start when she falls into bed with Andy at first meeting- I imagine if anyone in this universe ordered a pizza it would come with extra sausage.

I will say that Dominant Andy did nothing for me. I generally like my subs with an aggressive, self assured streak, but i he had been the only sales point of the book I would have put it down. As it stands, I got thorough the scenes he was in by skimming or irritably muttering under my breath: “Go away, Andy!” I can’t tell if the writing was not as strong or if it just wasn’t my fetish.

But Gabe was a fun male submissive lead with zingy chemistry. At times it touched on the idea that he was submissive because he was broken, which is not an idea I encourage, but on the balance it also made him a pleasant mix of fragile and tough, in a way that made my overly maternal dominant heart go pitter-pat. I had no trouble believing this half of the triad was bound for steamy fun.

It’s also a good example of femdom outside of femdom tropes- Madison is nobody’s leather wearing Mistress, nobody cracks a whip and the focus here is on D/s in a relatively normal (for porn land!) setting. If only Andy was given a smaller part, no matter how much he’d been assigned to be a sexual catalyst.

Category: Erotic romance
Rating: o~o~o~o (4/5)
How I got it: Bought it!
TL;DR: Bookseller Madison gets a choice between buttoned up sub Gabe and bad boy bossy type Andy. Logically, she  screws both of them until book’s end.

Review: Silver Metal Lover by Tanith Lee

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The Silver Metal Lover is what I’d describe as stealth D/s. Tanith Lee was one of those writers that spoke to me when I didn’t quite have the vocabulary to describe what I wanted in a relationship. Her lyrical, often purple prose can border on hysterical at times, with everything having an impossible loveliness and an emotional weight of a ton of bricks. That was perfect fodder for a teenage girl weaned on fantasy and sci-fi, the kind who wants to have adventures and see beautiful things.

I got so wrapped up in this book I wept. I admit it can be sentimental and overwrought to the ponit of silly, but it’s one of my favourites.

And it’s a literal owner/property relationship story about an android programmed to be perfect for his owner, and a sixteen year old rich girl, Jane. Like many of her ilk, she needs to find herself and her sense of self worth, but this incarnation of the trope is relatively well done, with just the right note of cynical self awareness to tie it together.

When we meet our heroine she’s a trembly mess living in her mother’s shadow, on a future earth where technological progress has put much of the human race out of work and left everything poisonous. Jane’s got abominable idle rich friend, and lives in a cloud castle trying to do what she’s supposed to do according to her mother’s careful plans that even change the physical shape of her body, and wanting none of it.

But, seeing Silver, for the first time in her life she wants something. Initially repulsed and unable to explain where she’s terrified by the man machine that looks like a metal troubadour, in short order she conspires to acquire Silver and run away from home.

Silver is incapable of being anything other than perfect, an amazing lover, an artist, but also naturally pleasing in whatever capacity he’s needed. He is about as inherently submissive as you can get in that regard, not embodying the doormat ideal, but the compliance and service aspect.  his makes a good foil for Jane’s development- because he is compelled to be perfect for her, they embark on just the sort of relationship Jane needs to develop as the best possible person she can be, before they have to face the challenge of Silver’s existence as an artificial being.

I do think it did an interesting version of the standard plot of self-discovery-via-love. While waiting for a man to change your life is not necessarily the most healthy approach to life, the relationship depicted is an interesting use of the trope because Silver is not written like Aladdin-with-carpet showing her the world, but rather that the need to make a nest with Silver creates a place for her to do some developing and changing- and he manages to do something a lot of F/m fiction doesn’t seem to, which is make the need for each other feel mutual. and that’s part of the romance- although Silver gives everyone what they need, Jane finds a way to reach him as a person. The story, by presenting her with a perfect submissive, drives Jane to make the changes she needs to make in herself.

That’s actually something I don’t see much of- male doms can need to be “tamed”, but by and large the only taming that seems to happen to fictional female doms is death or dis-empowerment. Case in point, what keeps happening to Irene Adler.

I think the one criticism I might make is that initially it’s hard to spend long periods of time with Jane as a person because she’s so fragile and sad, but I think it’s part of what makes it a better example of dominant love- doms are not, for the most part, captains of industry or nobility. They have sad days and worry about things. This is very much a candi-floss book for the emotional. On the other hand it’s also what I’d describe of as the Twilight for the anti-Twilight but overly romantic girl.

So expect a heroine who waxes lyrical about how amazing her love is, expect that she will be derpy and feel alienated from her friends, but for once be relieved that the romance demands she learn to rule herself and her love and the ending cares about her being self actualized as a person.

Category: Sci-fi YA novel
Rating: o~o~o~o~o (5/5)
How I got it: Library
TL;DR: D/s without the fetish or the sadism, sweet and appropriate for a sensitive reader who doesn’t want to be submissive while they’re overcome with love.

Review: Fealty

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Not many images of thisFeatly
by Ms. Mahler

It’s an often unreasonable criticism of something to accuse it of resembling a romance novel. Actually this is one of Fealty’s core strengths as a short  story. It’s free too!

Fealty works for me because it’s basically one of my fantasies, albeit treated much more nicely. The Baroness of the story, finding herself widowed and free to marry whom she likes, intercedes in the life of her true love when he swears an unbreakable bond of fealty to the wrong lord, an enemy to herself and their lands. Holding her knight captive through magic, she keeps herself entertained while holding him prisoner. He, in turn must reconcile honour with his love for the lady who is holding him.

I compare it to a romance novel positively, and it has a lot of the core strengths of the genre. As I’ve talked about before, romance novels are female achievement stories- and there also tends to be a focus on hearth and home that has the practicalities of a chatelaine. Since so many femdom stories focus on a male audience first, it’s a nice change of pace to have a by-women-for-women approach that otherwise characterizes romance as a genre. Much like the genre it’s very sweet about the sex- the language is circumspect even when she’s literally riding his cock- lots of wetness and rubbing, less vulgar. I am a filthy mouthed bawd and it’s nice to see someone be a hell of a lot more subtle without losing the point- and I can believe Baroness Myrtle is getting off.

Particularly worth note is the deliberate non-inclusion of rape in it. Although magic/fantasy stories allow for plenty of scenarios of beguilement, the female lead makes scrupulously sure that, prisoner or not, her captive knight wants all the sex. I generally shade a lot darker- but I appreciate the relevancy to a broader audience.

Category: Short Fiction
Rating: o~o~o~o (4/5)
How I got it: Free!
TL;DR: Short and sweet, more tender than mean. Captivity with consent, with a very fantasy romance flavour.

Review: Erotic Tales Of Female Domination, Tomio Hall-Black

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Erotic Tales of Female Domination is an inexpensive ebook, containing three short stories, each one a closed BDSM scene, and each takes place within the boundary of a BDSM relationship. Everything, regardless of the theme, is consensual.

Tomio also writes over at “Masculine Submission“.

The first two short stories really did nothing for me. I don’t think they were that bad, but very dialog dependent, with very little ‘story’, much more sexual vinegettes than full tales in their own right. However the last of the three… yow.

Angela Makes The Rules– Angela, a loving girlfriend, and her boyfriend Andrew are trying out one of his D/s fantasies. With her boyfriend tied spread eagled to the bed and blindfolded, her tease and denials scene is all about control, with light touches and lots of talking. Of course, Angela discovers, she likes it.

Butt… Surrender– Loving D/s Pegging. It’s focused on the feeling of being owned from strapon sex. Read it to get a warm up for talking dirty without being very vulgar.

Be My Whore – This is the last and best of the stories. I had to go retrieve my socks from where they were blown from my feet. Whether it is the sexual pacing, the fact that it’s genuinely funny, or that there’s a little edge of cruelty, which I like, a make believe role play fantasy of whore, pimp and clients made me laugh and gave me warm and fuzzies.

Category: Fiction
Rating: o~o~o~o (4/5)
How I got it: Bought it!
TL;DR: Three loving femdom stories that focus on happy couples having fun. Everything is 100% realistic and the last story is particularly good!

Dominant Cunt Maracas (And Kegels)

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So, someone decided that the best possible way to train your vaginal muscles was weighted benwa balls. Or, as the official brand name of this toy is called, Luna Beads.

They come, like many sex toys marketed to women, in non-threatening pastels. To make the experience of stuff to shove in your vadge seem classier, you get a little black box and a white silk storage bag. The actual toy is designed with a degree of customization- you have powder blue or pink balls of different weights, two with a little loop string so you won’t lose them inside yourself and then have to guddle a loose, slippery ball out of the pocket up near your cervix, and a white silicone harness that holds two balls together (see picture) in which ever colour combination you like.

The outer balls are hollow, hard plastic with heavy disclaimers in your accompanying booklet about it being the being super safe kind. The weights inside appear to be rubber covered metal ball bearings, about the size and shape that you used to find in an old track ball mouse. You use it by shoving it into your cunt until it’s past the muscle that allows a vagina to hold things in. In theory the weights are supposed to tone your vagina while the balls within balls are supposed to provide sexual stimulation.

This is not a good product for a reason I will get into. An actual set of baoding balls, which are metal hand exercisers following a similar principle, generally vibrate in a vaguely harmonious way. If you like vibrations, which I get nothing from, this could be a good thing for a no electricity route to self gratification. Luna Beads, not so much.

Clunk-clunk-rattle-clunk. The internal balls do roll around freely with every motion of your hips. However I will provide the clarification that the do so by random, not very rhythmic bonking. If having something gently but abruptly clonk you on the inside of your vagina, hurrah. And don’t let smarmy marketing copy make you think you’ll be wearing this to the bank and the gym. Theses little clonks are surprisingly loud!

The net result is essentially about as erotic as the maraca it’s going to turn you into.  I’ve tried wearing these numerous times, including during my very vigorous masturbation style, which should have made them the most stimulating with how I get myself off. Usually I like having something heavy inside me, but this was not a good idea. However, again, sounding like a four year old’s attempt at percussion does not a happy dom make. A rattly dom, but not a happy one.

As far as a pelvic floor exerciser I’m undecided. I’ve been doing kegels since childhood, and have no trouble making my vagina do lots of micro-contractions. Wearing the balls over a prolonged period, like half an hour, at the heaviest weight, appears to produce some muscle pressure. But I have to feel like the inconvenience of their rattling isn’t to the benefit and it’s not like vaginal grip strength is easy to quantify.

At the end of the day, a strong pelvic floor, as well as muscular awareness, is good for both men and women. However I’m pretty sure that the defects in these rattles make them unsuitable for most people.

Hot/Cool Fictional Male “Subs”: Momo

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We’ve looked at subs who were supposed to be taken seriously in the stereotypical masculine role, from fantasy lead, Richard, to the original super hero, but that’s hardly the entire picture. male submission is no limited to performance in traditional roles. This next sub, very explicitly in an Owner/pet relationship and the work deals with loving someone despite not measuring up to the assumptions about what a man should be.

You’re My Pet: Momo

Kneeling before his new ownerMomo is the name picked out for the male lead in a manga and live action television show (Kimi wa Petto/Tramps Like Us) about an explicitly Owner/Pet relationship between a stressed out career woman (Sumire) and a dance prodigy (Takeshi). After finding Momo homeless and sick on the streets, Sumire rescues the diminutive young man. As he recovers in her apartment, he begs to stay, and her joking suggestion that he can only stay as her pet gets met by enthusiastic barking.

She names him “Momo” after her childhood dog, and the two set up living together. But, she declares that it won’t be a sexual relationship, she only sleeps with men with higher height, higher income and higher career/education. This is part of her challenge as a character. Sumire is non-conforming with gender expectations, with (for Japan) stereotypically masculine hobbies. At the story’s opening she had just gotten a demotion for hitting a sexual harasser. Frustrated in love and picked on by female coworkers for her unemotional demeanour, Sumire hides a very fragile heart inside a shell of hard hitting professionalism.

Momo provides her with the unconditional love of a pet. His challenge is dealing with his own career, as a modern dancer. Unable to continue as a ballet prodigy because of his height, Momo has turned his talents to modern dance. As well as proving the stereotype  of dancers being kinky, for him, being a pet lets him feel safe, loved and wanted. Sumire looks after him, providing him with food, shelter and bathes and cuddles him. sometimes he acts more dog like, especially to amuse her, and sometimes he’s more human, although she generally has to look out for him and he’s goofy and a little derpy about his responsibilities

Bath time!
Cuddles!

Momo’s boyish exhuberance is undimmed by Sumire’s controlling tendencies. But, don’t take my word for it, check out an english language translation of the manga!

A very typical exchange.

Although they are perfectly happy together, much of the tension comes from hiding their relationship from nosy people, and the fact that Sumire cannot reconcile the bliss she has at home with what she should want. The reintroduction of her college crush kicks off the main challenge of the story, where she attempts to date someone who is everything she thinks she wants. In practice she has a lot of trouble opening up and relaxing with Momo’s rival, and although she finds him hot, everything is depicted as stiff and awkward.  Faithful Momo allows her to lie and claim her pet is her brother in order to not scare his rival away, going along with her explanation and being supportive of her stated goals.

The rival!

Meanwhile of course, Sumire and Momo develop some healthy romantic tension. For Momo of course, this is forbidden and for Sumire, incredibly confusing. She’s only initially able to accept having a boisterous young man bouncing around the place by making it as unsexual as possible, and she also has to deal with redefining what she considers attractive.

Woof!

To be a bit circumspect in the name of spoilers, resolving the conflicts of the story, mean reconciling who people really are. Momo is able to be the most honest, and his subplot is pretty much just figuring out his dance career and how that might take him away from his beloved owner, while Sumire must come to terms with the fact that she doesn’t really want a guy who outdoes her in everything and that she likes who she is and likes that he likes who she is.
The manga VS the show

It’s a romance comic/show aimed at women, and it’s a conflict that’s not unfamiliar in femdom, when you first set out to try to make sense of what works for you. While M/f has to reconcile explaining that it’s not some sort of reactionary right wing abuse excuse,  F/m bumps up against gender expectations in a way that’s often a challenge for doms and subs alike. Although I’ve never personally worried about being gender conforming, this post is a bit personal for me, because I know that Sumire expressions of dominance are really very close to mine- wanting to look after my property, and liking playfulness. It’s also a good example of something that’s very blatant without ever really touching on the explicitly kinky nature of what’s going on in the story. Which is pretty valuable because not everything kinky that people do is dressed up with whips and leather.

Fiction often gives us the tools to discuss the things that work for us and codify them. The entire manga/show “Kimi wa Petto” is also charming in that the dominant is not a villain and she doesn’t have to stop being dominant to be able to love Momo, nor does he have to stop being her sub. There’s some aspects of “melt the ice princess” but she doesn’t stop being a pet owner in her thawed out state. And, Momo is presented as the one you want to root for in the comic. Cute, bratty, but above all loyal, Momo does not lose his sexiness just because he’s property, neither does he need to have a “hero” moment where he has to put his submissiveness aside to get things done.

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Next week, we’re getting thin on content again. I encourage you to post in the comments about a pairing you’d like to see, and why you feel the male half is a good example of a sub. It can be subtext or explicit, porn or not. The only rule is that the male sub needs to be either hot or be awesome. Or both!

Where Is The 50Shades Of Femdom?

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Or: When are we going to see a femdom best seller?

A woman's grey shawl, pale, softly draped on a white mannequin torso, that is also wearing 2 strands of pearls
Grey shawl image borrowed from etsy.

I get this as a compliment/question, when people find out about the whole femdom writer thing. People assume that I’m positioned to write the next Fifty Shades of Grey. Only for F/m relationships. Unfortunately as awesome as it would be to produce a work of BDSM erotica that’s so popular that you can buy licensed pyjamas and softcore sex toys based on it, that’s not going to happen. Not without a bunch of variables being taken into account at least.

It’s not just that the average writer no more makes the best seller list than the average person who runs makes the Boston Marathon. The success of 50shades is also part of the genre that birthed it, and the cultural underpinnings that define pop culture’s approach to sexuality. But first, before I delve in a little deeper, a back story about the book for those living under a rock.

Fifty Shades of Grey is a trilogy about a BDSM relationship between virgin Anastasia Steele, the sub, and a billionaire hunk dom, Christian Grey. It not only crawled from ebook sales into the mainstream, but more to the point, began as a Twilight fan fiction where the two leads of that franchise were stripped of the supernatural and sent to college. When that got popular, the author changed the names to avoid getting sued and monetized it, building a following from the amateur reader/writer online groups. Pay attention, this origin story is just as important as the BDSM parts of the books.

One of the important things that defines 50shades is how classically part of the romance genre it is, including its parentage and all the various things that combined together, even more than just people wanting to read about kink in general, that pushed it to the forefront. Part of its success is that it is extremely formulaic.

Critics of the books get bogged down in two places, how badly written it is, which I think is unfair even if it’s true, and other critics point out how poorly representative it is to healthy relationships, kinky or otherwise. News articles trying to be click bait hammered the End of Feminism angle, trying to argue that all women are femsubs and that’s because having jobs and personal autonomy is not natural for them,  something they’ve been saying every single time people pay attention to women’s fiction. Which, moving onto my next point, includes the genre of romance, a pretty major segment of the publishing industry as a whole.  (By the way, that’s 39.3% of book sales according to some estimations, while other figures give romance 55% of the paperback book market.)

If you’re a dude, and/or don’t read romances, you probably have a mental image about pirates cutting ladies out of their corsets and really bad writing- and you’d be about half right. Romance has its highlights and low points, including everything from literary masterpieces to the throwaways you can get at the grocery store with titles like “The Millionaire Italian’s Lover”. But, because it’s such a big genre it straddles many other genres, so you may have a fantasy story with a romance in it,  or a sci-fi story with a romance, etc… It’s a little more than the story of a romantic relationship, although that’s one of the things all romances have in common. But, as a bit of a background- the genre is unabashedly female audience dominated, including a fair deal of pandering, and romance novels generally have something to them that compliments the “romance”. In the case of  50shades, BDSM is providing the compliment, and provides the tension to drive the story and create conflict.

While everyone who is not asexual and/or aromantic likes the idea of relationships, the genre gets its power from the fact that historically,  women dealt with the limitations that participating in the world can only be facilitated by the presence of a male romantic partner. Looking at the genre at its earliest days, writers like Jane Austen didn’t just want to pair off people because it was sooooo romantic, but were writing about making the sort of life choices that defined what freedoms their female characters would have. In her time period, Austen was mostly making a point about sensible matches with people you can respect. Okay, so what does Pride and Prejudice have to do with BDSM erotica?

Why, everything of course! Keep reading, I have a point here!

Read more

Hot/Cool Fictional Male “Subs”: Richard (Sword/Seeker of Truth)

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Just because I didn’t like a series doesn’t mean it’s not  good example. In this particular instance, I’m going to look at a fictional male sub character who is cast as being cool, awesome and all around great with inclusion of pretty explicit and blatant D/s. There’s nothing stealth here.

And it’s not surprising. While there’s always the odd image of a tied up, tortured hero to tease viewers and readers, male submission is just so inherently normal that it’s surprising there’s not more things with such strong kink focus.

Richard: The Hero Is A Sub

Our Hero Who Is Always RightThe “Sword of Truth” books are a series of fantasy novels following the standard tropes of chosen one heroes, magic swords and the author’s own particular love for Libertarianism and femdom. Writing about this one is accepting that just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not a good example, because these books are bloody kinky- and more to the point, it’s about as close as it gets to a femdom Gor without being some sort of female supremacy porn story or other niche work. It is also popular enough to have rated its own television series, the Seeker of Truth.

And it’s chock full of plot facilitated female dominance. It starts with the canonical female love interest/lead, Khalan is a “Mother Confessor”, a magical being gifted with the ability to make anyone fall passionately and unrevokeably in love with her to the result of perfect obedience. And your only protection is to love her that much already. And guess who, of course just naturally loves her as much as one of those magical slaves?

But the series doesn’t stop with Khalan. By book one we are introduced to an order of leather wearing, pain magic wielding Mord-Sith, who train people as pets and demand to be called “Mistress”. Later, another group of matriarchs, this time magical wizard trainers, pop up and incidentally have a penchant for abducting magic men and locking collars around their necks.

Rada'han

(To which the wearer in wizard training must willingly lock around his own neck)

And then another whole book has Richard slaved to a woman by magic, so he’s forced to be her fake husband. By plot convenience, although his love for Khalan is labelled as True, Richard is constantly abducted and dragged away by one woman after another, with them all being cast as sexy, hot bitches who want to jump Richard’s bones until they rattle. And his constant slave/prisoner status is never considered to detract from him and his masculinity. Even when the poor bugger is raped by a Mord-Sith.

Woo!

Rather the reverse- the noble suffering is seen as something that makes him cool and is used as a stand in for depth, as although he becomes emperor of the whole god damn world by the end, with all slavishly acting like he is Libertarian Jesus, he is explicitly allowed to have fallen in love with a Mord-Sith (simultaneous to Khalan) and sympathize with the numerous ladies who want him to be their property or teach him by force. The books have a bad habit of making the lead eventually show up everyone and everything by being just that awesome (all while being a “simple woods’ guide”), and I would not call them well written. But… when pop culture normally limits male submission to a punch line or a temporary inconvenience… the author managed to convince people to pay him a lot of money to talk about his submissive fantasies. And then film them without any self concious irony.

Superman, my last example, was very quiet about the femdom elements, but this one is loud, proud and in your face. He might not be *my* ideal male sub, but Richard is lovingly rendered, with highly successful sales, as the Best Person Ever and is widely adored by fans of the work.

Book Review: The Mistress Manual (The Good Girl’s Guide to Female Dominance) by Mistress Lorelei

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Amazon's cover image for the ebook

The Mistress Manual (The Good Girl’s Guide to Female Dominance) by  Mistress Lorelei

A caveat before I begin: Mistress Lorelei, by look of her blog, is an intelligent kick ass feminist. This is in no way a criticism of her as a writer or as a dominant. She hits a lot of great points, and it’s not the worst book that could fall into the hands of a novice.

It’s just… it’s another guide on how to act like a pro-dom. It’s like if you were a gay man and all you could find was advice on how to please clients as a rent boy or acting like a rent boy to spice up your marriage. It’s not a how to for dominants who also happen to be women, it’s a guide to pleasing male subs by taking on a role to satisfy what they want.

She gets some bits okay, like talking about post scene whoopsies and bad feelings. She clearly wants her audience to feel empowered and comfortable. Unfortunately she’s still stubbornly clinging to the idea that the reason to be a fem dom is better participation by the male in housework. She at least suggests you might find this leads to better sex but… not because it’ll make you horny. I recognize that many women are not comfortable with their sexuality and prefer ‘fun’ over ‘fucking wet’. And getting listened to, at least in the bedroom might even spill into confidence in other areas- I know when my desires are being respected I’m much happier. But nowhere is it stressed by Lorelei that you’re doing this for you.

For example in asserting your authority:

“It is also your duty to rename his genitalia. The name should emphasize his juvenile and inferior status without being so mocking as to render him impotent. A slightly childish name for his penis and two alliterative names for his testicles will equip you to tease and torment him to your heart’s content.”

Or

“You should know that even when he is bound to a backboard or forced into ladies’ clothing, you must supply him with fantasies (the script) or his mind will wander.”

This isn’t about the dominant. She sells the archetypes, nurse maid, governess, etc… talks about gender bending and dudes in diapers. It’s not all bad, of course and I’m not against male pleasure. Ideally both parties in a D/s thing are getting their needs met. She even gives dating advice for single doms. But Lorelei is oddly silent about being a dom woman with a vanilla man or broaching the topic with a partner from the women’s perspective or even any indication that it’s ever the reader’s idea.

Instead her instructions often read like a client’s wish list. Now there’s a long history of sex tips for women in the Cosmo school of “touch him on the penis!” and man pleasing, so she can’t be faulted for not deviating. And many, many people get off best when their partner is horny, but this isn’t doing sub guys any favours either.

Lorelei writes as if all sub men are cross dressers or adult babies or all manner of extra fetishes. She puts a lot of emphasis on roleplay scenarios where you are the Governess or the Nursemaid or similar. The guy is the sexual deviant being catered to by a woman understanding his unique sexual needs- this is not about her sexual perversion. We’re back to re-enforcing the idea that anything female and dominant is odd and that sub guys are just men with elaborately complicated demands.

Don’t get me wrong, she definitely cares about her audience. For example when she’s talking about developing authority by dressing up:

“A simple black T-shirt and matching jeans can be as effective a costume as all the leather-and steel regalia in the world. You need to decide how much of your submissive’s visual sense you want to please, how much you want to tease. Also, frankly, how much do you enjoy dressing up? If you love it, you can choose elaborate outfits by fantasy. Or you can relax and say the hell with it. You’re the Domme, remember.”

This is a huge leap better than Elise Sutton’s guide to being a highly specific male fantasy. I think if I had a criticism here it’s that in this context “Mistress” is being used to mean a professional dominant and not in the generic sense. It’s another roleplay scenario being put on as surely as if the woman was dressing up as a naughty school girl.

Category: How to Guide
 Rating: o~o~o (3/5)
How I got it: Borrowed
TL:DR: A good gift for a vanilla woman you want to top you, or someone who doesn’t like thinking about their own sexual desire to dominate. Very much a “Vanilla Guide To Being A Dominatrix”. Not my cup of tea.